


Captive

by CrimsonAccent



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dehumanization, F/M, Gen, Hallucinations, Panic Attack, Violence, idealization of self-harm, mental break, most is minor and implied but still there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:44:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimsonAccent/pseuds/CrimsonAccent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boyd and Erica in the vault, with an appearance by Cora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captive

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this sitting in bits and pieces (phone, notebook, computer) for about a month now. It isn't timely but oh well. Hopefully the dialogue isn't as horrible as I feel it is. And the title is...blunt. Concrit welcome! Sorry for the delay thecivilunrest :)

At first, he thinks they are just stir crazy. Being locked up for a week with no one for company but your girlfriend sounds idyllic but it gets old fast. The fact that their kidnappers could pop in at any moment made any idea of romance and sex stale before it could even cross their minds. 

Boyd paces the room, measuring it out by stride. Forty Boyd-strides by 70 Boyd-strides. Or, 50 Erica-strides by 85-strides. He is stiff and awkward as he moves, afraid if he relaxed for even a moment that he would fly apart.

He can envision it now; the Boyd particles will bounce around the room like a devious version of Pong. But Boyd can’t let himself dissolve. A pile of sand can’t hold Erica close and offer her meager comfort or make half-hearted escape plans. 

They had talked, and talked, and talked.

Of Alicia, his sister who was simply gone.

Of Frankie, her mother who was gone for different reasons.

They talk about everything under the sun until they have the entirety of each other’s lives memorized.

Boyd can write out Erica’s story verbatim, except for the humiliation of seizures and how it broke apart her family because it’s just not a shareable Thing.

Erica can recite Boyd’s story for a biographer or podcast, except she wouldn’t be able to explain how horrible riding that broken down bus was because cleaning an ice rink only fuels guilt, not cars.

Their predicament is bleak enough without the demons haunting their shadows.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” Of course, Erica is the one to make them face the hard truth. Boyd stares at her, leaning against an unforgiving concrete wall, her hair a matted, greasy mess that gets in the way of her eyes. But maybe she needs that curtain between her and the world right now.

Boyd doesn’t have hair to shield him from an ugly view, so he vies for words instead. “I didn’t know the draft was bothering you.” Despite the fact that all the windows are clouded with dirt and filth and reinforced, cold air still found its way in to torment them. 

“That’s a pretty lame misdirection, Boyd.” She examines her nails, to see if there was any apple-red polish that she hasn’t picked off yet.

“I’m tired of talking.” That, at least, is true. “I’m tired of waiting, I want to do something.”  
“I am too. If they wanted bait, they picked the wrong pair.”

The pair that had abandoned their Alpha. The alpha who had warned them, but who warnings were not heeded.

She glares at her hands so fiercely that the absence of claws is jarring. “But that’s not what I was talking about.” Boyd keeps his silence, just as he did when Derek did things that made him question the sincerity of his talk of “family that lasts forever.” 

Erica presses on, because that’s just what she does. “I feel like there is all this extra energy inside me, and I just want to spazz out,” she says this softly, reluctantly. Just because she has the strength to continue, doesn’t mean she had the strength to be passionate. “I don’t like it. It’s almost like when I had my seizures. It’s the feeling of being out of control. Like the world is flying around you, and you’re at its mercy. All you can do it wait to be over and for it to let you go.”

At last she breaks eye contact, tracing patterns on her leg, never once going still. The other hand drums against the floor, betraying her agitation. 

Boyd does what he should have done a week ago, and sits beside her, holds her. He takes a deep breath, and the scent of Erica--lead, apples, bleach--hits him in a visceral way. It’s physical, like a slap in the face, the way the memories of laughter and fear slam into him. 

Boyd tightens his hold on Erica, but she doesn’t respond to his one-sided hug aside from a huff that would be a sign of surrender from anyone else. “It’s like being a caged animal,” he murmurs. “And your skin crawls because it’s like there is someone watching. And we never get a break.”

()()()()()()()()

By the end of the month, Erica is ready for Derek to break her arm again. Hell, he can snap her leg too. It’s strange to think that school is out and she would’ve been taking her driver’s test, if not for this self-induced disaster.

Food appears when they finally pass out from exhaustion. Water drops from the ceiling, making Erica feel like an animal every time she scrambles for a drink. Well, more of an animal.

Talking is reduced to grunts and irritated snaps and occasional whimpers when she wakes up from a nightmare. To her frustration, even as her humanity retreats and the wolf emerges, she is stuck. 

The wolf strains at invisible bonds, thrashing as if in a trap. But they will not break.

It keeps her off balance, and she knows it bothers Boyd too.

Could it be the feeling of separation from their pack? 

She has never experienced a full moon effectively alone, but will be experiencing a steep learning curve in a few days and it unnerves her. Erica sometimes wonders if being with their alpha is what let her and Boyd retain traces their humanity under the influence of the moon. Her skin itches all over, almost as if fur is under it, ready to burst through.

Bad enough her mind is lost to an animal frenzy when the moon shows its ugly mug each month, but it is simply too much for Erica to envision losing her physical human body to the Bite. 

She shudders. A ram of ice has plunged straight through her body, and Erica keens, wondering if her organs have been splattered in a mess across the walls. 

She wraps her arms around her stomach--to keep her guts in, just in case--and everything is shaking and the world tumbles out of focus like when the god of Suck swoops down to shove a seizure into her body. 

Erica’s eyes and mind are of one accord, screaming that she is slick with blood, but her nose whispers that it is just sweat erupting from her skin. The clash of sensory information is enough to make her sick, but how can she puke if ice is through her spine, trapping in the acid and bile?

The pain and misery cut through the fog in her mind, and Erica finds she can think for the first time in weeks. She latches onto that, and her world is no longer a blur of indistinct shadows. With vigor that surprises even herself, Erica throws herself at the pain head on. She won’t just passively ride it out, thrown this way and that. 

Erica’s insides are defrosting as she rocks in Boyd’s arms.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

The bench is cold, solid metal, but it doesn’t burn like silver--it just reeks of rust and copper. Blood, his mind instantly identifies. The sharp tang of bleach with a hint of apple intermingles with the scent, making him nauseous. 

The echoes of Erica are everywhere.

Boyd refuses to flop against the concrete anymore, as he had lounged when Erica had mused about the lunar eclipse. “I hope it makes us stronger,” she had said, in the days after the freak out that had lasted for hours.

Now, he calls the bench his home and holds hands with a girl named Cora, who claims she is his Alpha’s younger sister. A scent of smoke and ash that burns his nose clings to her, just like Derek. The discomfort is familiar, welcome _(comforting)._

Erica was full of ragged edges you could get snagged on, broken glass melded to a steel frame.

Cora is a minefield. One misstep, and you’re obliterated. 

Boyd hopes bare feet can’t detect mines.


End file.
